Planning the Contact Velocity for Robotic Batting

Impulsive forces are more efficient than dynamic and static forces, and are used to achieve everyday tasks that would be difficult or impossible using the latter two types of forces. Yet, impact is rarely used in robotic manipulation due to difficulties in modeling, planning, and control. This paper studies the problem of batting a free flying object to a target location, with a focus on computing a contact velocity between the bat and the object to generate needed impact on the latter to alter its trajectory as desired. Based on our recent analysis [7] of 3D impact, we will first examine several invariant sliding directions in the contact plane for which the generated impulse has a closed form. In case no contact velocity yielding the initial slip in such a direction achieves the batting task, an iterative algorithm will be employed to perform corrections from how far the resulting object trajectory would off the target. Simulation results will be presented.